14 May 2025
Financial Times column paves way for Skift Forum to start “rewriting the rules of travel”
Bangkok — On 10 May, the reputed Financial Times published an article by columnist Janan Ganesh headlined “Why Travel Didn’t Bring The World Together”. It explored why an industry that has been hailed as a “reminder of the essential oneness of humankind” is now falling prey to the forces of nationalism, jingoism and xenophobia.
The fact that this failure has attracted the attention of an FT writer is significant. As the FT is arguably the world’s best-read publication by global CEOs, the thought-provoking column should also be of interest to Travel & Tourism CEOs.
But will it?
The Skift Asia Forum, due to be held in Bangkok on 14-15 May under the theme of “Asia’s New Priorities”, would be a good place to start, especially as it fits well within the Forum objectives of “exploring Asia’s transformation and the strategic shifts happening across the region — economically, politically, and culturally.”
Writes Mr Ganesh, “Either way, something that might be called the Naipaul paradox is going on in the modern world. Foreign travel has been growing for decades. But so has nationalism. This “shouldn’t” be true. Although no one except a fool or Mark Twain ever thought travel was necessarily “fatal to prejudice”, it was fair to expect a general lowering of enmities as people, and peoples, came into contact.”
The “Naipaul Paradox” is a reference to the late Nobel Prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian author V.S. Naipaul who wrote numerous novels and non-fiction books about societies and countries in the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Islamic world, often upsetting readers with his brutally frank and scathing criticism.
Although it is headlined, “Why Travel Didn’t Bring The World Together”, Mr Ganesh’s article also explores its corollary question “Why Didn’t It?”
Writes Mr Ganesh, “The kindest answer is that other forces drove nationalism, such as immigration, and that things would be even tenser now without the great increase in travel. Another is that most of the increase is accounted for by people who were liberal-minded to begin with. Those most in need of foreign exposure are still dodging it.”
In hindsight, he says, “travel should never have had such heroic claims made for it. If cross-border mingling by itself thickened the cord of human sympathy, Europe would have a more tranquil past. In other words, it is entirely possible to be a worldly jingo. It is possible to engage with another culture while rejecting it. Otherwise, the time that Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Zhou Enlai and the Islamist forerunner Sayyid Qutb spent in the west would have disarmed
them, instead of heightening their awareness of difference.”
He adds, “Travel is enormous fun. Besides that, it can be an educational top-up, if you arrive in a place with a foundation of reading. (And if you don’t over-index whatever you happen to observe in person.) But a connecting experience? A reminder of the essential oneness of humankind? If it were that, we should have expected national consciousness to recede, not surge, in the age of cheap flights, a dissolved Iron Curtain and a China that became porous in both directions.”
Those blistering comments should shock the senses of Travel & Tourism CEOs. Essentially, Mr Ganesh asserts that the legions of CEOs, Ministers, Tourism Governors, Secretaries, Academics, blew it. In their dogged pursuit of visitor arrivals, average daily expenditure, asset value, occupancies, load factors and return on investment, they gutted the very foundation and purpose of Travel & Tourism as it was originally intended in the post-World War II era.
The fact that the article has appeared in the year marking the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII and the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war should be even more cause for reflection.
Mr Ganesh offers no solutions. That opens a window of opportunity for Travel & Tourism CEOs, starting with Asia. As can be seen from recent geopolitical developments in the Middle East, South Asia, North America and Europe, socio-cultural schisms are posing a clear and present danger to national economies and corporate bottomlines.
Living in denial is no longer an option.
If hindsight is any indicator, it is only when risks grow into threats that johnny-come-lately CEOs move from hand-wringing to table-thumping. Overnight, relaxing visa bottlenecks, reducing taxes on alcohol imports, expanding airport capacities and reducing cross-border checkpoint queues are no longer as important.
I have been tracking this growing threat of “The Other Global Warming” (my term) for more than 20 years. My writings complemented the pioneering work done by Mr Louis d’Amore, founder of the Institute of Peace Through Tourism, former UN World Tourism Organisation (now known as UN Tourism) Secretaries-General Mr Antonio Enrique Savignac and Dr Taleb Rifai, the early generation of leaders of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) and many others.
Dr Rifai gave the cause enormous traction through a number of conferences in Ninh Binh, Santiago de Compostela, Cordoba and Bethlehem. His speeches always included the deep-thinking exhortation to never forget that the main purpose of tourism is to make the world a better place. Click here.
Why is Bangkok the best place to “start rewriting the rules of global travel”, as per the Skift agenda?
Having covered the Thai tourism industry since 1981, I refer to the Kingdom as “The Greatest Story in Global Tourism HiSTORY.” No country has better harnessed the power of Travel & Tourism for nation-building, through economic ups and downs, natural disasters, health pandemics, military coups, peace and conflict, marketing competition and management challenges.
No country is better placed to share the experience of how to get it both right and wrong at the same time.
This year, both the Tourism Authority of Thailand and Thai Airways International, the two long-standing pillars of Thai Travel & Tourism, marked their 65th anniversaries. Due to a number of internal and external factors, tourism is unlikely to hit the 2025 target. There is widespread recognition that the old business model of tourism development is shot.
Turning 65 can be a liability. But it can also stimulate wisdom. Thai tourism “doctors” are starting to treat the causes of the ailments, as against just the symptoms. For the first time, they are moving away from doing-business issues to addressing the risks and threats of doing business. Two of Thai tourism’s five-point strategy are about risks and crisis preparation.
Many of the looming risks and threats were flagged at a May 13 panel discussion at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand by eminent speakers from Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, along with the President of Open Society Foundations. They were all agreed that a new world order, fraught with peril but also rife with opportunities, is emerging in the aftermath of the U.S. “retrenchment” from global affairs under the mercurial Donald Trump.
Going back to the old way is not an option. A new way must be found. Watch the full panel discussion here.
Travel & Tourism is well placed to move in line with that shift, and also drive it. However, to effect structural and mindset changes, the people with seats at the decision-making table will have to be changed.
CEOs are over-represented. They always have been. After each past crises, it is always the “CEOs” who are summoned to offer solutions, on the (now certifiably bogus) assumption that those with money and power are best placed to propose solutions. But CEOs don’t get paid to make Travel & Tourism reflect the “essential oneness of humankind”. They get paid to generate business growth, growth and more growth.
Now, Mr Ganesh is telling the FT’s CEO readers that the era of tourism driving numbers and economic growth is over. If the neighbourhood is burning down, like the recent forest fires in California, Israel and Australia, the CEOs’ businesses are going to go down with it.
Moving from a fire-fighting to a fire-prevention mode will require delving into history, and identifying both the imbalances and root causes, just like a regular medical checkup.
For sure, many industry gurus flogging the new buzzwords such as “meaningful tourism,” “regenerative tourism,” “responsible tourism,” “sustainable tourism,” “high-value” tourism, etc., etc., will all jump on the bandwagon. Oh dear!!
Sadly, the new generation of young women leaders are under-performing. I have yet to see them doing better than the men.
By highlighting one of the biggest historic failures of tourism – to build a more peaceful, harmonious world — the FT article has paved the way for the Skift forum to raise the intellectual value of these discourses beyond the repetitive focus on technologies, sustainability and climate change. The erstwhile reluctance to broach issues either because they are considered controversial, uncontrollable or outside the industry comfort zones, will have to be jettisoned.
Travel & Tourism CEOs, especially in Thailand, will need to stop sweeping issues under the carpet and preaching to the converted. “Rewriting the rules of global travel” will require some serious introspection and soul-searching about whether they are still a part of the problem or can yet become a part of the solution.